Month: April 2016

Each word of the verse of Genesis 3:24 holds such deep secrets that they could never be uncovered. They relate to the inborn character of the people who were destroyed in the Flood, a character completely different from that of the people living after the Flood.

Let me say just a little about it. The most distant ancestors of this generation, who formed the earliest church, had a heavenly character and so were sown with heavenly seed. Their descendants consequently had in them seed from a heavenly source. Because of its heavenly source, the nature of this seed is to cause love to reign throughout the whole mind and unify it

The human mind has two parts: will and intellect. The will holds love or goodness, the intellect holds faith or truth. From love (goodness) the people of that time perceived what belonged to faith (to truth), so that their minds were unified. The offspring of such people keep the same seed inside them, which is perilous if they turn away from the truth and goodness, because they then corrupt their whole mind to such an extent that it can hardly be restored in the other life.

The situation is different for people who do not have heavenly but instead spiritual seed inside them–those living after the Flood, for example, and those who live in modern times. Such people have no love and therefore no will to do good. Faith is still possible, though; in other words, they are able to comprehend truth. Faith or an understanding of truth can lead them to a kind of charity, although they arrive at it by another way. Their way lies through conscience, which is instilled in them by the Lord and is formed out of a knowledge of truth and of the good that results from it. So their circumstances are radically different from those of the people who predated the Flood.

No one know what faith is in its essence who does not know what goodwill is, because where there is no goodwill there is no faith. This is because goodwill is just as inseparable from faith as goodness is from truth. That is, what we love or really care about is what we regard as good, and what believe in is what we regard as true. We can therefore see that the oneness of goodwill and faith is like the oneness of what is good and what is true.

The oneness of goodwill and faith is also like the oneness of our will and understanding. These are, after all, the two capacities that take in what is good and what is true, our will taking in what is good and our understanding what is true. So, too, these two capacities take in goodwill and faith, because goodness is a matter of goodwill and truth is a matter of faith. No one is ignorant of the fact that goodwill and faith are associated with us and are in us, and since they are associated with us and in us the only place they can exist within us is in our will and our understanding. Our whole life resides there and comes forth from there. We do have memory as well, but that is only a waiting room where things gather that are going to enter our understanding and will. We can see, then, that the oneness of goodwill and faith is like the oneness of will and understanding.

Goodwill unites with faith for us when we will to do what we know and sense. Willing is a matter of goodwill, and knowing and sensing are matters of faith. Faith moves into us and becomes part of us when we both will to do and love what we know and sense. Until that happens, it is outside us.

Faith is not faith for us until it becomes spiritual, and it does not become spiritual unless it becomes a matter of love. It becomes a matter of love when we love to live out what is true and good–that is, to live by what we are commanded in the Word.

Now that I may reveal what I have experienced for the past several years, I must begin with the circumstances of our resurrection, or the way in which we leave bodily life to our eternal life.

To convince me that people live on after death, I was allowed to talk and spend time with many people known to me during their physical life, which I did, not just for a day or a week, but for months and almost as much as a year. Our interactions were the same as they had been in the world.

These acquaintances were positively astounded that while living the life of the body they hand been (and many others still are) so skeptical–skeptical to the point that they did not believe they would continue to live after death. The truth, they found, is that little more than a day passes after the demise of the body before we enter the next life, since that life is a continuation of this.

We each have at least two evil spirits and two angels present with us. Through the evil spirits we have contact with hell, and through the angels we have contact with heaven. If we were not in touch with both, we could not possibly survive for a minute. So every one of us, although completely unaware of the fact, associates with some group of hellish spirits; but their torment is not transmitted to us, because we are undergoing preparation for eternal life. In the other world, we are sometimes shown the community we had been part of, since we go back to it and therefore to the life we had lived on earth. From there we either head toward hell or go up to heaven.

People who not lead good, charitable lives or allow the Lord to guide them are part of the hellish crowd. After death they become devils themselves.

People have only the most general concept of hell, just as they do of heaven, and that concept is almost so vague as to be none at all. It is like the picture of the world at large available to those who have never been outside their cabins in the forest. They know nothing about its empires and countries, let alone its forms of government, and least of all about society and the way people live in society. Until they know these things, their concept of the world cannot be more than the sketchiest notion, which is practically no notion whatever. Likewise with regard to heaven and hell. In reality, both heaven and hell contain too many marvels to count–indefinitely more than any planet could hold.

The vast number of wonders there can be seen from this one thought: Just as no two people ever have the same heaven, no two ever have the same hell, and all the souls that have ever existed in the world since the beginning of creation flock together there.

Love for the Lord and for one’s neighbor constitutes heaven, as do the joy and happiness it brings. By the same token, spiteful opposition to the Lord and one’s fellow human constitutes hell, as do the penalties and torture it brings.

Hatred comes in countless different types and even more variations on those types. For every variety of hatred, there is a hell.

Precious stones in the word such as those on the breastplate of judgment and the shoulders of Aaron’s ephod, symbolized and represented religious truth. The gold, the fibers of blue-violet, red-violet, and double-dyed scarlet, and the fine linen of the breastplate represented different aspects of love; the precious stones represented aspects of a faith based on love. So did the two memorial stones on the shoulders of ephod, which were shoham stones in gold settings. (See Exodus 28:9-22) The Book of Ezekiel openly draws the same connection where it talks about a person who owns heavenly riches–wisdom and understanding:

You were full of wisdom and perfect in beauty in Eden, the garden of God. Every precious stone was your covering: ruby, topaz, diamond; tarshish, shoham, and jasper; sapphire, chrysoprase, emerald; and gold is what the tambourines and pipes in you were crafted from. On the day when you were created, they were prepared; you were perfect in your ways on the day when you were created. (Ezekiel 28:12,13,15)

The stones here do not mean stones but the heavenly and spiritual qualities of faith, as anyone can see. In fact every stone represented some essential ingredients of faith.

People should be aware, though, that the only wisdom comes from love and so from the Lord, and the only intelligence comes from faith and so, again, from the Lord. What is more, all good comes from love and so from the Lord, and all truth comes from faith and so from the Lord.

When these things do not come from love and faith and so from the Lord, they are counterfeit, even though they bear the same names as the real entities.

Nothing is more common in the Word than for gold to symbolize and represent the goodness that belongs to wisdom or to love. All the gold used for ark, the Temple, the golden table, the lampstands, the utensils, and Aaron’s garments had this symbolism and representation.

The prophets use gold similar way. In Ezekiel, for instance:

In your wisdom and in your understanding you made yourself riches, and you made gold and silver for your treasuries. (Ezekiel 28:4)

This exactly states that gold and silver (goodness and truth) come from wisdom and understanding. Silver here symbolizes truth, as does the silver in the tabernacle and the Temple. In Isaiah:

A horde of camels will blanket you, the dromedaries of Midian and Ephah: they will come from Sheba. Gold and frankincense they will carry, and Jehovah’s praises they will proclaim, (Isaiah 60:6)

Here too gold symbolizes goodness. Frankincense and myrrh symbolize things that are pleasing (to the Lord), because they spring from love and faith. This is why they are called “Jehovah’s praises.” So in David it says:

And (the poor) will live, and (God) will give them some of Sheba’s gold and pray for them continually: every day he will bless them. (Psalm 72:15)

Since there are infinite varieties in Heaven–since no community and in fact no individual is just like any other–heaven is therefore divided overall, more specifically, and in detail. Overall, it is divided into two kingdoms, more specifically into three heaves, and in detail into countless communities. We will now discuss the details. They are called “kingdoms” because heaven is called “the kingdom of God.”

There are angels who accept the divine nature that emanates from the Lord on a deeper level and angels who accept it less deeply. The ones who accept it more deeply are called heavenly angels, and the ones who accept it less deeply are called spiritual angels. Heaven is therefore divided into two kingdoms, one called the heavenly kingdom and the other called the spiritual kingdom.